The story that stayed with a young Larry McMurtry, more than any of the cowboy exploits, was the one about a molasses barrel. McMurtry's grandfather had traveled by wagon 18 miles to Archer City for winter provisions, returning with an 80-pound barrel of sorghum molasses, the nearest thing to sugar at the time.
In the self-conscious hallucinatory tradition of historical novelists like E.L. Doctorow and Don DeLillo, Enrigue keeps intrusively reminding us that this overpacked tale of the past is something he's constructing, as much as resurrecting. And, like his predecessors, Enrigue subscribes to a paranoid reading of history.
For the first time in franchise history, the Dallas Cowboys are sending two wide receivers to the Pro Bowl in the same season. CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens didn't just post big numbers in 2025. They changed how defenses had to play Dallas every week. Bracketing one meant surrendering to the other, and allowing QB Dak Prescott to find and carve out favorable matchups. There was no safe answer, and that constant pressure is what elevated both receivers into rare air.
In 1836, Apaches raided a remote ranch near Janos, a tiny town on the northern fringes of the state of Chihuahua, in the newly independent republic of Mexico. The Natives absconded with some cattle, as well as with a young widow named Camila. Setting off in pursuit was José María Zuloaga, a taciturn lieutenant colonel in the Mexican army supported by a band of irregulars. Among them: a self-possessed teenager who served as an aide-de-camp, a pair of Yaqui brothers whose permanent address was the town jail, and a sharp-shooting nun named Elvira, who was actually a singer of zarzuelas dressed up in a habit.